Information Scotland

The Journal of the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals in Scotland

December 2003 Volume 1 (6)

Endpiece

Everything in moderation

Brian Osborne discovers a refreshing approach to promotion in Scotland's Book Town.

Back in the summer I paid a visit to Wigtown – Scotland's Book Town – and after wandering round the growing number of enticing second-hand bookshops I decided that the body needed refreshed as well as the mind, so headed off to a nearby pub for lunch. After all I didn’t get to be what our President Alistair Campbell described as a “well-rounded wordsmith” (Information Scotland October 2003) without taking appropriate nourishment at regular intervals.

As I toyed with my drink my attention was caught by the beer mats – which I saw to my surprise were advertising Dumfries & Galloway Libraries. Now, while I cannot honestly say that my pint tasted any better for knowing that Alastair Johnston was, so to speak, catching my drips, I was intrigued and impressed by this, to me, novel means of promoting libraries.

So often so much of our promotional activity goes into preaching to the converted and the substantial proportion of the population that never darkens the doors of our public libraries is given up as a lost cause, or at least as a market that is too hard for us to try to reach.

So congratulations are due to Dumfries & Galloway Libraries, Information and Archives for taking a positive library message out into the pubs and inns.

The idea of using licensed premises as a site for library advertising is of course a fascinating twist on the old concept of the public library as a sanctuary for the honest working man from the perils of strong drink and the temptations of the street. Neil Munro (who might just have cropped up in this column before) has his Glasgow waiter and Kirk beadle Erchie MacPherson discuss Robert Burns, strong drink and loose living in these terms:

“But he hadna ony o’ the blessin’s we have in oor time to keep him tame. There was nae Free Leebrary to provide him wi’ books to keep in the hoose at nicht, nae Good Templar Lodges to help him in steerin’ clear o’ the horrors o’ drink...” (A Bet on Burns)

Somewhere in the back of my mind or in my hazy recollections of a very old library textbook I seem to recall an old picture of a Victorian working man standing in the street pondering the stark choice – “the Public House or the Public Library” – one decision leading on to happiness, sobriety, contentment, self-improvement and domestic bliss while the other would ensure a rapid decline into drunken misery and degradation.

As a man who has enjoyed both public houses and public libraries (both in moderation of course!) I am glad that we have moved on sufficiently to be able to promote libraries on beer mats without embarrassment or controversy.

Wigtown is, by the way, well worth a visit by anyone with a taste for books and bookshops. There are now something like 30 bookshops and book-related businesses in the town and the critical mass of book businesses has now made for a real buzz. The town has also seen a remarkable transformation of the old Wigtown County Buildings and a general smartening up of the town’s environment. Wigtown also hosts the Scottish Book Town Annual Literary Festival each September. All in all the development of Wigtown is a remarkable success story for an area which is well off the beaten tourist track and provides a striking vindication of the theory that economic recovery in rural Scotland could be driven by something as seemingly irrelevant and of supposed minority appeal as selling second-hand books.

Have any studies been done on the role of public libraries as engines for economic growth? New retail complexes always place great emphasis on securing as a lead tenant some major store such as Marks and Spencer or John Lewis, knowing that their drawing power makes other enterprises keen to take space. But has anyone looked seriously at the role of libraries in attracting customers to a High Street or a shopping mall; an interesting way of fighting the marginalisation, physical and intellectual, of our services perhaps?

Brian Osborne (brian@bdosborne.fsnet.co.uk)

Information Scotland Vol.1 (6) December 2003

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Last updated: 16 February 2004